PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Quan Zhou, director of the film End of Summer.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture

Filmmaker Quan Zhou talks about his feature film debut, End of Summer, which was screened at the inaugural edition of the Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival in China. (The film also had its European premiere, almost simultaneously, at the Rome Film Festival in Italy.) Quan Zhou describes the film as a coming-of-age movie with autobiographical elements. One of these is football. The film is, in fact, set in the summer of 1998, the summer of the World Cup in France, and mentions Italian footballing star Alessandro Del Piero prominently, as the idol of the film’s youngest protagonist. Football also carries an important meaning in End of Summer for other reasons, narrative and cultural, which the director explains. End of Summer is also a story about three different generations. He tells us whether it was difficult to balance the stories of the film, represented by a father and a son, and an older man who the child befriends. As well as talking about End of Summer, Quan Zhou tells us about his aim to tell stories about his native land, the collaborative nature of his works, and his future project, which he is currently working on.

End of Summer: A coming-of-age family drama timid fifth grader, an orthodox middle-aged teacher, and a grumpy old man experiencing their first awakening to true self during the 1998 World Cup in China.